In the March 24 issue of BDlive, Business Day’s online journal, Flow chairman Bheki Shongwe shares his views on business, politics, life and more.
Bheki believes South African businesses have an obligation to voice their intolerance of incompetence and corruption in a way that pricks the conscience, rather than raising ire.
“You don’t want to raise destructive anger,” he says, while acknowledging that it is such disruptive anger that often makes people reconsider things.
“When the wind is blowing this way, I don’t stand up and pee into it, because the pee comes back on my legs. I turn and work with the wind,” says Bheki.
Drawing an analogy from his years as MD of Kaizer Chiefs, Bheki says a coach who berates his players for losing will never lead them to success. First one needs to praise and build up players before spurring them on to achieve greatness.
Reflecting on his resignation as MD of Metrobus after two years for personal safety reasons, Bheki says he had to let 88 people go for “dipping their hands into the till”. A strike ensued, buses were torched and lives lost.
“I was beginning to feel that we were more animals than human beings,” he recalls.
Politically Bheki is aligned with the African National Congress (ANC), but recognises the disparity between the party’s promises to uplift the poor and its actual delivery.
He is observing with interest the rise of Mamphela Ramphele’s Agang political platform and decries the ANC’s opposition to such competition, saying “those who criticise competition are often devoid of ideas and complacent”.
Bheki says voters and politicians should embrace the right to vote for policies, rather than personalities or parties and describes South Africa as having a “politics of patronage”.
Highlighting crime, corruption and irresponsible spending, he says the country has problems “at all levels”, making special reference to issues affecting women and children, given that he has two daughters and a son.
“I am hoping the boy doesn’t grow up thinking women are punchbags.”
Despite his outspokenness, Bheki remains upbeat about South Africa, a country he adopted 25 years ago. He arrived here to take up a position with Shell, planning to transfer in due course. However, with the unbanning of the ANC, he felt drawn to contribute to the new democracy.
Asked whether he had considered entering the political arena, Bheki says he despises politicians who enrich themselves at the expense of those they represent, but doesn’t rule out the possibility entirely.
“Maybe I should go in there and lend a hand. I don’t know if I could ever stand up and shout ‘vote for me’ but as you get older, you get senile, and I’m moving in that direction. There’s a lot of senility in politics. Sometimes it seems to be the only qualification!”
For now, though, Bheki is content to chair Evraz Highveld Steel and Flow Communications, while forming an agricultural management group to keep farmland productive in the wake of land redistribution.
Read the full interview here.